TY - JOUR
AU - Wen,Wen
AU - Ceccagnoli,Marco
AU - Forman,Chris
TI - Patent Commons, Thickets, and Open Source Software Entry by Start-Up Firms
JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL - No. 19394
PY - 2013
Y2 - August 2013
DO - 10.3386/w19394
UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19394
L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19394.pdf
N1 - Author contact info:
Wen Wen
The University of Texas at Austin
McCombs School of Business
2110 Speedway Stop B6500
Austin, TX 78712
E-Mail: Wen.Wen@mccombs.utexas.edu
Marco Ceccagnoli
Scheller College of Business
Georgia Institute of Technology
800 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30308
Tel: 404-385-2233
Fax: 404-894-6030
E-Mail: marco.ceccagnoli@scheller.gatech.edu
Chris Forman
Georgia Institute of Technology
Scheller College of Business
800 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30308
E-Mail: chris.forman@scheller.gatech.edu
M3 - presented at "Patents, Standards and Innovation Conference", January 20-21, 2012
AB - We examine whether the introduction of a patent commons, a special type of royalty free patent pool available to the open source software (OSS) community influences new OSS product entry by start-up software firms. In particular, we analyze the impact of The Commons--established by the Open Source Development Labs and IBM in 2005. We find that increases in the size of The Commons related to a software market increase the rate of entry in the market by start-ups using a new product based on an OSS license. The marginal impact of The Commons on OSS entry is increasing in the cumulativeness of innovation in the market and the extent to which patent ownership in the market is concentrated.
ER -